Ep. 157: How 10 Minutes a Day Can Unlock Six-Figure Gifts
EPISODE 157
How 10 Minutes a Day Can Unlock Six-Figure Gifts
About the Episode:
I’m back from a month in Greece, sun-soaked, inspired, and wildly energized, and there’s one theme that keeps showing up in every single conversation I’ve had since: 10 minutes can change everything.
In this episode, I’m sharing the power of micro-bravery. Not hypotheticals, but real stories. A client who made one 10-minute thank-you call and created a deeper connection than she imagined. Another who picked up the phone and walked away with a six-figure intro. I’ll even tell you how a 10-minute YouTube workout changed my whole day. This is about momentum over perfection. Courage over rumination. Action over spinning. You don’t need the perfect deck, a full hour, or a polished strategy. You need 10 minutes and a decision to move. Let’s talk about how to find those moments and what can happen when you do.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
What The 10-Minute Ask actually is—and how to use it today
How coaching and community make these 10-minute wins multiply
Why this isn’t just about productivity—it’s about possibility
Real examples of clients who unlocked major donor relationships with one short call
What rumination is costing your mission
The difference between waiting for confidence vs. building it
How to start embedding daily “brave reps” into your workflow
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Rumination eats time.”
“Ten minutes of action has a compound effect, not because you finish the whole thing, but because you change your energy around it.”
“You have 10 minutes, but the 10 minutes requires courage, and requires you to stop negotiating with yourself and just go.”
“When you have accountability and a place to celebrate and multiply, those 10-minute reps become a habit.”
“You have to stop waiting for bravery to arrive and just start practicing it.”
“We do not want pages and pages of fancy PDFs, reports, and slide decks. We want our phone to ring, and we want to hear you on the other side. We want an email from you. We want a video from you. We want the real you.”
“Ten minutes today helps to unlock that confidence for tomorrow.”
“You're not someone who waits. You're somebody who moves quickly, courageously and consistently, and sometimes you can raise six figures in 10 minutes, but you gotta get out of your own way.”
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Christina Edwards 0:20You. Welcome back to the podcast. Today. We're digging into this concept that has just been like popping up everywhere I turn, about how 10 minutes can really and truly change everything. I'm going to give you a couple of personal examples. I'm going to give you some client examples of these 10 Minute moments that have opened the door to that thing you thought would take six months. So I am recording live from my home. I am back home from taking a month in Greece to do a lot of exploring and sightseeing, a little bit of work, a little bit of play, a lot of bit of play. And it's really exciting to be back. There's so much I want to share from that trip, but I feel like I'm still in the stages of, like, I don't know, distilling it all, kind of just thinking about it all So more to come on that other than this, is something that I have been dreaming about doing for many, many years. Probably told myself five years ago, it's not possible. I can't do it. And then somewhere around maybe two years ago, I was like, No, it's possible. I'm doing it. And then really inching towards, how do we do this? How do we do we do this as a family? What is taking a month in June look like? And we did a lot of exploring, you know, the sites you see, of course, we did the Parthenon and all of that. And we got to see my grandfather's village, which now has a population of 52 people. It was the second time I've been there, but it was really special to show my husband and my kids and, you know, drive the Peloponnese coast and do some islands too. And I'm rested and mostly not jet lagged anymore and ready to dig in. So yesterday, I had coaching calls with over 15 different organizations across my programs, and this 10 Minute framework came up again and again, because we tell ourselves, I don't have time, I don't have time. But the truth is, it's not really a time issue. It's a rumination issue. Rumination is the dread, the delay, the spinning of wheels, the overthinking on our heads, the ah, it's gonna right. That's the rumination. That's what eats time.
So today I want to share with you and show you what can happen when you actually trade rumination for action. So let's kind of name this deeper fear or mindset that's driving this very systemic problem that I see, this very human problem that I see across nonprofit leaders, fundraisers, marketers, entrepreneurs. Why do so many nonprofit leaders stay stuck here? You might be putting off something that feels like it's going to take forever. Imagine, you. Imagine you'll need a whole day, a whole plan, the perfect script, the perfect strategy, the perfect energy, right? I need to be real, well rested to do this. I need to, you know, be in my best whatever to do this, to do it right. Air quotes, right, right? You imagine that it has to have this like perfect circumstance, right? But what's really underneath that is just fear. It's just fear, fear of rejection, fear of getting it wrong, fear of fumbling, fear of making a mistake, fear of feeling embarrassed. sometimes there's even fear that am I gonna actually work? And now you're on the hook to deliver. You're on the hook for more growth. You're on the hook for more visibility, more risk, right? There are some people that actually struggle with that feeling. It's not the fear of the rejection, it's the fear of what if it's a yes, now I gotta perform, right? And those are real fears. Those are real human things we all deal with. I know I've been on both sides of it, right? So here's what it looks like, kind of day to day. Okay, it might look like you have donor calls on your list to do. To Do list for three weeks. It just keeps staying there week after week after week, right? It might look like reaching out to a prospect, but I need to kind of tinker with a deck first. Right? I need to finish that first. Let me move this here. Let me. Get another set of eyes on it. You may open your email platform and then close the tab, right? You keep saying, once we hire somebody, once this campaign is done, once this insert right, then I'll be able to and then suddenly, six months go by and nothing has changed. So the solution isn't more time. The solution is kind of lean in with me. 10 minutes of bravery. 10 minutes of action has a compound effect, not because you finish the whole thing, but because you change your energy around it. You break the inertia. You create momentum. You prove to yourself that the story you were telling yourself actually doesn't really have legs. It doesn't really hold and then you prove to yourself that, and it gets easier each time, easier each time. So I'm going to share a kind of a personal call out this morning before I hit record, I knew I needed to do some movement. I knew I needed to do a little workout, but it's like 95 degrees. Here it is. So hot here. So I knew I didn't want to go outside and blah blah blah, and I'm tired and I'm still a little jet lagged, blah blah. So here's what I did. Went to YouTube. I found a free, quick 10 minute video. Now, here's, here's what you might be thinking, 10 minutes. What's the point of 10 Minute Workout? 10 minutes is nothing, right? Do you hear that kind of laundry list? It doesn't even matter. It's just 10 minutes. But I didn't there's a little smiling face, and it was like, Oh, it said 10 Minute Workout. Um, no equipment required. What is she doing? This YouTuber is like getting rid of any friction, any obstacles. She's like, come on, Christina, 10 minutes, and I just decided not to overthink it. I just said, Let's go grab my sneakers, put them on, press play, and here's what's so interesting. By minute five, I was sweating. So you can't tell me 10 minutes is nothing. 10 minutes doesn't count because your girl was sweating. I was moving. 10 minutes didn't change everything forever, but it changed my state. It changed how I was feeling. And I actually felt accomplished at the end. I felt hyped at the end. I felt like I did. I did the thing right? I felt like I can do this again. I'm gonna do this tomorrow. So now I have something in my toolkit to deploy on a day where I'm like, It's hot, it's rainy, I don't wanna go outside, like, whatever my excuse bank is. And my favorite one, your favorite one, I don't have time. You got 10 minutes. If you have 10 minutes to scroll on Tiktok, which, listen, I know we all do, you you have 10 minutes to move and then it will move you. That change will move you.
Christina Edwards 7:54
I want to share with you two stories that happened this week. So one of my clients came to a call, and she said, Christina, I knew we had our call scheduled today, and before our session, I told myself, I'm just gonna make those donor calls. Now, it had been several weeks since she was last on a call with me, so she had several weeks to make her donor calls. But the urgency of like, I'm gonna see Christina's face today. There's some accountability there. Let me just do this. And these were not fundraising calls. These were no ask calls. Okay? So these were donor Thank you calls, donor follow ups. Now she had a laundry list of why she didn't have time to do those calls, or she didn't know the right things to say, or she's a newer Executive Director, she's not good at this right? We have, like, that entire list of reasons why she shouldn't right, but where she was able to override that list is, I'm going to meet with Christina today. I want to share that I did this accountability, and I'm going to give myself 10 minutes. And what happened in those 10 minutes blew her mind. She ended up making three to four calls. I believe. She said she got one voicemail. She was able to have five minute conversations with several of the different donors. One of the donors, it was such a deep, rich connecting conversation. They both got choked up on the phone. They both got choked up on the phone on a random Tuesday, right? Think about that. Think about that, that depth, that connection. It didn't require a script. It just required a decision to move, to take action. Now she's done a couple of different things, and this is why I was so excited for her first of all, her donor that had that she had that resonant call with said, Thank you. No one's ever called to tell me. Thank you. Wow. Okay, now she's forefront in their mind, right. Second thing, she showed herself, I can do this. She's now created that skill, right? Third thing, which made me most excited is if you've ever tried to engage your board in this activity, and this is. Not something you typically do. Now she can go show them. One, share the win, and two, say I didn't die. It wasn't that bad. In fact, I left with my cup full. I left better than I started. It was actually an amazing conversation. And the next time her board says, I don't know how I don't have time, she gets to say, got 10 minutes. 10 minutes. 10 minutes, right? So it's like you have to be first you are the leader. You have to take the first step. You are the one. And then when you take the first step, you show yourself. I can take the first step, and then you can show other people to say, Come with me. It's not that hard. We can do this together. Now, she has a relationship that is being built with a significant funder that has depth, that has long term connection. Now, remember, she could have told herself, well, I should have called sooner. It's been too long. It's been too much, too many months. Bs, 10 minutes. Take the action. Another client came to our club call, and one of the things that we had worked on together in previous months is calendaring and time for donor outreach each month. And so her time had come up. It's time for donor outreach, right? Today's the day.
Christina Edwards 11:20
She said, I really didn't want to do it. I was putting it off Christina, I really didn't want to do it. And she did Same, same thing. She was like, but you know what? I did it, and I knew we had this call. I'm gonna do it. She made about four calls that day. One turned into one of the warmest, high impact intro meetings that you would ever want. Okay, this call with this donor that is engaged ended up saying, let me introduce you into to somebody who has the capacity for a six figure gift. Let me introduce you. Let me make this happen. There is a conversation happening because she decided to take 10 minutes and have a phone call with a donor. That's it. That's the action. She stopped avoiding it and gave it 10 minutes. That 10 minutes can turn into six figures. So when you say, I don't have time to call a donor, I don't know what to say. I want you to think about these two instances. The first one was a newer Ed. She had all the reasons not to, and look how connective it was. Look how it's helped pave the way for her nonprofit's future. The second one was a more seasoned executive director. Well, listen, she's got 1000 things on her plate, which is a million reasons why she doesn't have time to make these calls, and yet, had she done those other 1000 things, she would have missed out on a six figure gift. You have 10 minutes, you have 10 minutes, but the 10 minutes requires courage, and the 10 minutes requires you to stop negotiating with yourself and just go you with me.
Christina Edwards 13:23
And I think there's a nuance to this. There's a nuance because you're like, sure 10 minutes got it. Christina, the nuance here is that my clients didn't just do this out of nowhere. They did this because they had support. And I think it's twofold. I think it's support and accountability. Support and Accountability. It's making me think about like any class I never wanted to take in high school. I don't know, biology, sorry, didn't want to take it. Oh my god, calculus. Didn't want to take it, so I had support and accountability in my teacher to take it. It took at least the sting off of of it right now. Imagine I wanted it. Imagine it was my nonprofit. It was a cause I care about. Now, layering on that support and accountability takes most of the pain out of it, right? It really, really does. And so I think that is for many, many organizations, for many people listening, for many people who come to me where their funding is plateaued, where they're actually working harder than ever, and it's not translating into more dollars. That's the piece that's missing. Having a coaching call, having community with other people who get it, sharing not only your wins, but sharing where you need help, sharing where you're like I need some accountability. I need some motivation. I need to get out of my own way here. That is why I've created my programs. That is why we have the club, which is a fundraising program for organizations who have teams who want to sync marketing, who. Want to sync fundraising, who want to sync leadership, so they can unlock 100k in new funding? Okay, that's more established program. Then I have the sprint method, which is for organizations, maybe solo EDS, maybe newer founders who want to learn the skill of community fundraising, so that when they so that when they have a campaign, they raise five figures every single time that community that support so you're not just DIY in it, and so that you actually have a coach, so you actually have a group of like minded people who are there to support you. That's the missing piece for many of us. That's why, if you've ever tried to learn a language and then you just quit, like, who has downloaded Duolingo and then been like, Ah, forget it on day four, right? You're missing the human element, the accountability, the like, can anyone come alongside and do this with me? Can anyone share a tip that worked? How can I habit stack this? That's the power of coaching.
Christina Edwards 16:11
When you have accountability and a place to celebrate and Multiply those 10 Minute reps become a habit. Who would you be if every single day in your calendar there was a 10 minute block to do the hard thing, to do the brave thing, not only who would you be like? Who would you become? What would happen in your organization like? It blows my mind to think what's possible if that was all you did, is start layering in these 10 Minute asks, these 10 Minute moments in your calendar. And 10 minutes is NOT TO TINKER. 10 minutes is high impact, high ROI action. You have to stop waiting for bravery to arrive and just start practicing it. I know you know it's not ideal, but that's, that's the currency, right? You might be thinking, sure, but my task list is way longer than 10 minutes. I can hear you in my mind's eye, right? Or my donors need something polished. You don't understand Christina, it's going to take more than 10 minutes. Nope. They need something honest. We do not want pages and pages and pages of fancy PDFs and reports and slide decks and things. We want our phone to ring and we want to hear you on the other side. We want an email from you. We want a video from you. We want the real you.
Christina Edwards 17:52
The only way to get to the bigger work is to stop skipping this first step. So 10 minutes today helps to unlock that confidence for tomorrow, and remember, then you get to show that confidence. You get to be that leader in your organization, to your board, to your staff. So then suddenly they're like, well, I could do 10 minutes too. Okay, this is the work we do. We create those 10 Minute moments throughout your week. If you're ready to work smarter with coaching, clarity and a tight community, you can book a call with me at splendid. Atl.com, forward slash start there. You can book a call with me, and you can learn more about my programs. So remember, you're not someone who waits. You're somebody who moves quickly, courageously and consistently, and sometimes you can raise six figures in 10 minutes, but you gotta get out of your own way. I'll see you next time you.